A reminder crossed my desk this morning that as
Heartland Tech Groups (HTG) get together this week in Orlando for their fourth-quarter board meetings, the Canadian chapter of the group, HTG10, is looking for a few good resellers.
For those unfamiliar with HTG, the organization is an umbrella of
Microsoft channel partners and managed services providers that has been together for almost a decade now. At its core, HTG brings together like-minded entrepreneurs and has them serve as each other’s board members, providing a “second set of eyes” into business plans, and perhaps most importantly to small VARs with a single principal, accountability.
Members challenge each other to come up with plans to grow their businesses, both separately and collectively, and hold each other to their plans and goals in quarterly meetings. I had the pleasure of sitting in on part of such a session when the Canadian chapter got together in June at Microsoft Canada’s Mississauga, Ont. headquarters, and I have to say the atmosphere and style of the group is amazing.
A statement from the peer group received by
CRN Canada says that HTG is currently looking for new Canadian partners in Vancouver, Kamloops, Kelowna, Kingston, Montreal, Fredericton and Halifax, and invites Microsoft partners (particularly those with MSP business models) to find out more about the organization. Could this mean a second Canadian chapter is about to be created? It seems likely, as Heartland has a few hundred members, broken up into about 20 groups of 12 or fewer VARs. HTG10 is the first Canadian-specific group of partners.
“It is a dog eat dog world out there,” said Stuart Crawford from
Bulletproof InfoTech, facilitator for the HTG10 group, and a good friend of (and regular contributor to)
CRN Canada. “Canadian HTG members have a distinct advantage over those who elect to go after the market themselves. Having a trusted group of peers to lean on and also help each other through our challenges provides our members with a competitive advantage. This is something you can’t easily put a price on; it is priceless.”
